ABSTRACT
The eighteenth century bore witness to a good deal of intellectual ferment in the Jewish community, much of it focused on the notion that the time was arriving for the reconnection of the people of Israel with their ancient homeland in the Land of Israel. The proponents of Jewish emancipation subsequently succeeded in obtaining a favorable outcome after a very unruly debate on January 28, 1790, when civil equality was granted to the Sephardic Jews of France and to the Jews of the Papal States. Moses Mendelssohn's restatement of the traditional response to the question of Jewish nationalism failed to satisfy those critics who insisted on seeing unacceptable nationalist implications in Judaism. The issue of Jewish nationhood thus continued to be a matter of serious public contention, and in 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to bring the matter to a head.
